“Now I can speak out fully,” said the traveller. “I don’t want to defend myself, but I should like you at least to understand me as I understand myself, and not look at the matter superficially. You say I have treated her badly,” he continued, addressing the man with the kindly eyes who was watching him. “Yes, you are to blame,” said the latter, and his look seemed to express still more kindliness and weariness. “I know why you say that,” rejoined the one who was leaving. “To be loved is in your opinion as great a happiness as to love, and if a man obtains it, it is enough for his whole life.” “Yes, quite enough, my dear fellow, more than enough!” confirmed the plain little man, opening and shutting his eyes. “But why shouldn’t the man love too?” said the traveller thoughtfully, looking at his friend with something like pity. “Why shouldn’t one love? Because love doesn’t come ... No, to be beloved is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to feel guilty because you do not give something you cannot give. O my God!” he added, with a gesture of his arm. “If it all happened reasonably, and not all topsy-turvy—not in our way but in a way of its own! Why, it’s as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don’t deny it. You must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and stupid things I have found time to do in my life—and there are many—this is one I do not and cannot repent of. Neither at the beginning nor afterwards did I lie to myself or to her. It seemed to me that I had at last fallen in love, but then I saw that it was an involuntary falsehood, and that that was not the way to love, and I could not go on, but she did. Am I to blame that I couldn’t? What was I to do?” “Well, it’s ended now!” said his friend, lighting a cigar to master his sleepiness. “The fact is that you have not yet loved and do not know what love is.” The man in the fur-lined coat was going to speak again, and put his hands to his head, but could not express what he wanted to say. “Never loved! ... Yes, quite true, I never have! But after all, I have within me a desire to love, and nothing could be stronger than that desire! But then, again, does such love exist? There always remains something incomplete. Ah well! What’s the use of talking? I’ve made an awful mess of life! But anyhow it’s all over now; you are quite right. And I feel that I am beginning a new life.” “Which you will again make a mess of,” said the man who lay on the sofa playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen to him. “I am sad and yet glad to go,” he continued. “Why I am sad I don’t know.” And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing that this did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.